Best Books for Young Adults

Draft January 2003

From a conference room in Philadelphia, just blocks from the Liberty Bell, seventy-two books that honor the past, celebrate our freedom, and look to the future have been selected by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), a division of the American Library Association (ALA) for the 2003 Best Books for Young Adults list.

The fifteen member committee narrowed the list from over 900 submissions to 203 official nominations meeting the criteria of both good literary quality and popular reading appeal for teens, ages 12-18. Over ninety teens attended a special session to share their opinions with the committee. The winning titles include many multicultural books, adult books, and books from small and foreign presses. Two titles with graphic novel components and a fiction title with significant color artwork add visual appeal to the list.

Eleven books received a unanimous vote from the committee: Feed by M. T. Anderson, a cautionary tale about an overly-commercial future; Overboard by Elizabeth Fama, a fictionalized survival story of shipwreck victims off the coast of Sumatra; The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer, in which Matt, a clone of 142-year-old drug lord El Patron, wonders what the future holds for him; Out of the Fire by Deborah Froese, in which an accident at a bonfire party results in the disfigurement of a teen girl; The Hunting of the Last Dragon by Sherryl Jordan, where two unlikely allies set off on a quest; Son of the Mob by Gordon Korman, where a mafia son falls in love with the daughter of an FBI agent; The Kite Rider by Geraldine McCaughrean, an adventure in which Haoyou joins a 13th century traveling circus in a most dangerous role; Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore, which answers the question of WWJD as a teenager; Left for Dead: A Young Man’s Search for Justice for the USS Indianapolis by Peter Nelson, a school history project that changes history; 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East by Naomi Shihab Nye, a strong collection from a Palestinian-American poet; and Lucy the Giant by Sherri L. Smith, which chronicles the adventures of a teen working on a commercial crabbing boat.